XML to class (deserializing)

[yelloBelly]

Hi,

Is there any way in PHP to read an XML file in and bind the contents to an instance of a given class?

I've done something similar in .NET using serialization which reads a XML config file and then automatically populates the properties of a Config object.

E.g.

// Create an instance of the XmlSerializer specifying type and namespace.
XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(Config));

// A FileStream is needed to read the XML document.
FileStream fs = new FileStream(filename, FileMode.Open);
XmlReader reader = new XmlTextReader(fs);

// Use the Deserialize method to restore the object's state.
Config appConfig;
appConfig = (Config) serializer.Deserialize(reader);

Hence you have an object called appConfig of type Config.

TIA

Dave

[NogDog]

If you're running PHP5, you might want to take a look at the [man]SimpleXML[/man] functions. For instance:

class Example
{
   var $xml = NULL;
   function getXml($fileName)
   {
      $xml = simplexml_load_file($fileName);
      if($xml !== FALSE)
      {
         $this->xml = $xml;
         return(TRUE);
      }
      return(FALSE);
   }
}
// use it:
$myObject = new Example();
$myObject->getXml("filename.xml");
// view data:
printf("<pre>%s</pre>", print_r($myObject->xml));

I

[yelloBelly]

Thanks. So this will get me the XML contents. I'm assuming that I would need to loop through the XML contents and assign each one to a property of my class?

If this is the case, is there not an easy way to load XML and pre-populate class properties?

Thanks

NogDog wrote:

If you're running PHP5, you might want to take a look at the [man]SimpleXML[/man] functions. For instance:

class Example
{
   var $xml = NULL;
   function getXml($fileName)
   {
      $xml = simplexml_load_file($fileName);
      if($xml !== FALSE)
      {
         $this->xml = $xml;
         return(TRUE);
      }
      return(FALSE);
   }
}
// use it:
$myObject = new Example();
$myObject->getXml("filename.xml");
// view data:
printf("<pre>%s</pre>", print_r($myObject->xml));

I

[NogDog]

The simplexml_load_file() function will create an object with a hierarchical data structure, for which you can then either directly access elements via a syntax like $xml->element_name->sub_element_name[0]->foobar, or you could walk through the data tree using the children() and attribute() methods.

Or, I might be totally misunderstanding what you're trying to do. 🙂

Check out the examples on the [man]SimpleXML[/man] page, as they give a decent introduction to what you can do with this class.

[yelloBelly]

NogDog, thanks for info. I think I'll take the approach of loading the XML file then looping through each element and assign them to the properties of the class.

Cheers

Dave

NogDog wrote:

The simplexml_load_file() function will create an object with a hierarchical data structure, for which you can then either directly access elements via a syntax like $xml->element_name->sub_element_name[0]->foobar, or you could walk through the data tree using the children() and attribute() methods.

Or, I might be totally misunderstanding what you're trying to do. 🙂

Check out the examples on the [man]SimpleXML[/man] page, as they give a decent introduction to what you can do with this class.